


Taako with a Cursed Sword

by thenevergonnafitinmuchkid



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Anna Anthropy, Minor Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Princess with a Cursed Sword, Taako gets hurt a lot, Taako is a princess, a princess can be anything okay?, solo rpg turned fic, still a guy though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:56:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25144279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thenevergonnafitinmuchkid/pseuds/thenevergonnafitinmuchkid
Summary: At his and Lup's coming of age party, Taako is gifted a cursed sword by a mysterious stranger. The sword draws Taako to some ruins, and things go horribly wrong.
Relationships: Barry Bluejeans/Lup, Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Kudos: 5





	Taako with a Cursed Sword

**Author's Note:**

> So like it says in the tags, this was originally a run of the solo rpg Princess with a Cursed Sword by Anna Anthropy (available at https://w.itch.io/cursed-sword - I highly recommend) and it morphed into a TAZ fic.

_A figure stands in an ancient ruin, bare feet on crumbling stone. His gown much too fine, his sword much to dark._

*****

At his coming of age ceremony, after he and Lup were finally allowed to mingle and the princess was acutely distracted by a cute boy, the princess was confronted by an uninvited guest. He didn’t know this at the time though and accepted the sword from the stranger on the dancefloor. The princess knew it was unorthodox for one of the guests of honor to be given a present directly, let alone a sword, but he had a rebellious streak and took the wrapped sword gladly. The mysterious guest vanished into the crowd and was never seen again. The princess kept the wrapped sword on him and partied until the night was over. After brushing off Magnus, who was admittedly trying to help the him to bed as the princess had had a few drinks too many, the princess fell asleep in his bed still fully dressed, sword in hand. The next morning, he woke up and decided he would unwrap the sword and take a look. As soon as he touched it, his mind was filled with whispers of horrible things. When he tried to drop it, he found that he could not let it go. The sword showed him a faraway location, a powerful force compelling the princess to go there. And so, the princess had no choice but to follow right that instant.

*****

So, in his finery from the previous night and his feet bare, the princess journeyed to these ancient ruins that stand before him now, sword in hand. His once beautiful dress now ripped and dirty, his manicured feet now blistered and bruised, he enters the ruins. The first thing he notices is that these ruins have been almost completely reclaimed by nature. _Great_ , he thinks. _Should’ve brought Merle along for this one._ He flips his long, blonde braid back over his shoulder and continues on. The ground at the entrance was stone, but the floor inside was made of wood that groans wherever he sets foot. The boards bend at some places, so the princess walks carefully. At one point, he thinks the boards are stable enough, but they break, and he falls through. Thankfully, the fall isn’t far, but he does land square on his back and gets the wind knocked out of him. The princess opens his eyes and sits up, coughing to regain air in his lungs due to all of the dust that was kicked up by his fall. _How the fuck am I supposed to get back up there?_ He thinks. _It’s not like I can climb very well with a sword in my hand._ Not that he was particularly good at climbing to begin with. The princess had lived a pampered life, and he was happy with that. Mostly. He feels something pull within him and realizes it’s the sword directing him towards a door that he didn’t notice just off to the left. He sighs and gets to his feet, ready to move on.

The room he enters next he is not entirely happy about.

“Statues, great,” he says to himself. The princess looks around the room with an expression on his face that’s a weird mixture of boredom and unease. The statues are all large, looming, disfigured, and seem to watch him as he walks around the room. He eventually comes to a statue whose face is pristine. Unlike the other statues in the room, it’s not damaged and angry looking. It’s beautiful. And the princess, loving beautiful things, is captivated by it. The statue is a person posed lying on their side, body facing away from the princess. Their head is turned so it’s in profile, and their body is draped in fabric, expertly rendered in stone. The arm not supporting the statue’s body is raised in the air, bending towards their head, and their face is looking up at it. Without realizing it, the princess finds himself reaching towards the statue. Just as he is about to touch it, the statue’s raised hand grabs the princess.

The princess jumps, but collects himself quickly “I mean, I was kind of expecting something like this, but it’s still fucking horrifying,” the princess deadpans. The statue rolls so that it’s facing the princess, raising its arm, and with it the princess, into the air. As the statue turns towards him, the princess notices a look of malice growing on its face. The princess soon finds himself dangling in the air by his wrist, getting higher and higher off the ground as the statue stands. When it’s at its full height, the princess notices there’s a sword at its belt that looks suspiciously like his own. The statue draws its sword and slashes it across the princess’s form in a diagonal swing, ripping the princess’s dress and cutting his skin quite deep in places. He cries out in pain and starts to thrash around in the statue’s grasp. He brings what he thinks is his unoccupied hand up to try to pry the statue’s fingers off of his wrist only to remember that his other hand already _is_ occupied by the cursed sword. _Right, sword, duh._ He swings the sword at the statue’s arm, only to find it blocked by the statue’s sword. The princess groans in frustration and starts trying to combat the statue, despite it being clearly better at this sword fighting thing than the princess is. He doesn’t give up though, as his life seems to depend on it. This is all suddenly becoming a lot more real of a situation for the princess. He realizes, as he pitifully attempts to fight back, that he could actually die in these ruins. The fear of death begins to overwhelm the princess and he doesn’t block quite as quickly as he should, leaving an opening for the statue to thrust! And it does, right into the princess’s stomach. The princess doubles over in pain, drawing his legs to his chest. He desperately thrashes out with the sword, trying to hit something, _anything_ that could slow this statue’s blows. Suddenly he hears a crack. He looks up to see that he’s knocked the nose off the statue’s face, making it recoil in horror. The sword seems to hum, pleased at what has happened, and the princess feels more force in the sword’s blows as he continues. Still losing blood, the princess thrashes as the statue’s face wildly, knocking off different parts and creating gashes in the stone of its face and arms as they go up to shield the statue’s face. It eventually is in so much distress that it drops the princess and he lands hard, his knees going in concerning directions as he lands on his feet, making him crumple to the floor. The statue touches its face in horror, realizing what damage has been done to its once beautiful visage. As it panics, the princess, through a haze of pain, begins to realize that the statue’s movements are slowing. And eventually, the statue freezes. What’s left of its face is screwed up in horror and its arms are stopped, shielding itself. The princess, now fallen on his butt, scooches backwards and realizes the statue looks a lot like the others in the room.

The princess tries to get to his feet, but due to a combination of his broken legs and bleeding stomach, falls back to the floor. Being a wizard himself, now is the time that the princess would normally cast a high-level healing spell on himself, but unfortunately, he realizes that he has left his wand at home. Without something to properly channel his magic, he is not able to cast a spell powerful enough to heal all of his wounds. He is able to set is legs and stop the bleeding from his stomach, but the majority of his injuries stay in their current condition. Feeling at least somewhat safe, the princess takes a moment to regain his composure and assesses his situation in a bit more detail. He is covered in deep gashes and his own blood.

“Dammit, this was a really great dress. Lup’s gonna kill me, we can never wear these outfits again…” the princess complains. He notices the blood on his left hand, and slowly turns his head to look at his right, the one holding the cursed sword. “That’s weird,” the princess muses at the sword as it is currently glowing and humming a bit. As both die down, the princess notices that the battered old sword seems to have recovered somewhat, getting closer to what it must have been its original form

The princess carries on his journey, bruised, bleeding, and battered, but leaving the statue room behind. He enters a long hallway with a tall ceiling that features rafters that must have been entire tree trunks in their prime. After walking for what seemed like forever in his condition, the princess comes to what once must have been an exceptionally large, exceptionally grand shrine to a god the princess can’t quite make out. There didn’t seem to be any doors leading out of this long hall other than the one the princess entered through. Though upon closer inspection, there does seem to be a door hidden behind the shrine itself. The princess wonders for a moment if he should try to repair the shrine or if he should just tear it down completely. Deciding it would be easier to just tear it down, the princess gets to work. He uses the sword to tear apart what’s left of the shrine, but as he does so he starts to hear a ringing in his ears. With each slash and piece broken off the shrine he notices the ringing getting louder and louder until it’s eventually all he can hear. As the princess demolishes the last of the shrine, the ringing is so deafening, so ear-splitting, that he passes out. He jolts to consciousness in a field lit by a full moon, standing before a large, hunched figure with their back to the princess.

“H-hello?” the princess called out to the figure. When it turns around, the princess notices the form is a large werewolf, with blood on his hands and around his mouth “Who the fuck are you supposed to be?” the princess asks.

“I am Karaan, the god of lycanthropy and cannibalism,” the figure replies. “And YOU!” He yells, “You are the ungrateful sword-bearer who decided to destroy my shrine!”

“Not really sure you can fault me for destroying that thing, it was pretty janked up already,” the princess says.

“It may have been in disrepair, but you completely leveled it!” Karaan roared, “And for this… For this you shall pay.” Karaan lunges at the princess, and the princess instinctively throws up his right hand to throw a magic bolt at Karaan, but realizes he’s holding the sword instead.

“I mean I guess that works too,” the princess says and starts swinging the sword wildly. Karaan, being a god, is far more agile and experienced in close combat than the princess is though and manages to dodge all of the princess’s swings. When Karaan is right in front of the princess, he brings down his arm in a long swing, marring the princess’s face badly and causing the him to black out.

The princess awakens, this time once again in the long hallway in front of the damaged shrine, alone and on the ground. He reaches up to touch his face and is horrified when he realizes the slashes from Karaan’s claws are still there. He brings the sword up to his face, trying to catch a glimpse of his reflection in the blade, and realizes that the slashes are deep, leaving his face disfigured.

“FUCK!” The princess shouts. “You were my fucking money maker, my goddamn bread and butter!” He continues to let out a string of curses, covering his face with his left hand and reaching within himself to try and conjure up enough magic to cast a healing spell that wouldn’t leave scars… but he comes up empty, only able to slow the bleeding somewhat. “Fuck…” the princess says again, curling himself into a ball on the cold stone ground. He lies there for a while, secretly hating himself for how vain he is for crying over his looks. Once the princess is done crying himself numb, he gets up, using the sword to knock down the wall behind the destroyed shrine, and continues on. He doesn’t quite notice, but the cursed sword glows a little bit as it repairs itself even more.

The princess steps out through the wall he knocked down and into what must have once been an indoor garden because it is now completely overgrown with plants. There is a fountain in the middle, and light is filtering in from a skylight overhead. The room is warmly lit with green-tinted sunlight.

“Maybe there’s something here I can put on my wounds…” the princess muses. “Dammit, now I wish I had paid more attention to Merle’s shitty lessons.” He searches the room, racking his brain to try to remember what plants or herbs could be used for healing. The first thing he comes up with is aloe vera, but he quickly disregards that, remembering it’s used to treat burns, and that isn’t his problem right now. He eventually comes upon some pinkish flowers with large, round heads.

“Okay, I know this was something…” the princess says. “Cornflower? No, that’s blue and people put it in like teas or some shit… Cone… coneflower?” He wonders “I think this is supposed to be good to put on wounds. Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to wash these cuts off either.” He looks towards the fountain in the middle of the room, eyeing the water, and picks some of the coneflowers. The princess hobbles over to the fountain, trying to take off his gown in the process. It’s hard to get it around the sword, but he’s eventually successful. The princess looks down to see just how bad of a shape his body’s in. It’s… bad. He’s covered in long, deep gashes on his torso, not to mention the stab wound, and around his knees are large black, purple, and even green bruises.

“If I make it out of this bullshit alive, I’d better cast an illusion spell to cover up all these scars. Or just stop wearing crop tops… nah. Illusion spell it is.” He waves his left hand in the air and steps into the fountain. As soon as he submerges his first cut, he shouts in pain.

“Saltwater, huh? Whose fucking idea was it to put a fucking SALTWATER FOUNTAIN in the middle of a goddamn GARDEN?! The plants can’t even use the fucking water… I really need to clean myself up though. Fuck. FUCK.” He grits his teeth through the pain and manages to submerge himself completely. Desperately trying to push the pain from his mind, the princess scrubs at his wounds. As soon as the last one is clean, he scrambles to get himself out of the fountain. “I swear to the gods, everything in these fucking ruins is out to get me,” he grumbles. He shakes himself to get most of the water off. His long, wet braid slapping against his bare skin. The princess then gets to work grinding the coneflowers against the stone rim of the fountain with the sword, making a pink paste. He rubs the paste into his cuts and hisses when even _that_ stings a bit.

“This better be because it’s antiseptic and it’s working,” the princess says through gritted teeth. When he’s satisfied that he’s gotten to every gash and cut, the princess does his best redressing, though he rips the right sleeve of his gown with the sword accidentally. When this happens, the princess lets out an exasperated sigh, and the sword glows a little brighter.

“Now to see if there’s a way to get out of here…” The princess looks around the room and sees nothing, save for a glint from the corner of his eye. He turns in that direction and starts to search the wall more earnestly, eventually finding an old, rotting, wooden door. “Is anyone gonna get mad at me for trying to get this door open and maybe plucking a few more plants, or am I gonna lose an arm?” The princess asks the air. He’s met with no response. “Better fucking not…” he mutters, and starts clearing the doorway cautiously. He pricks himself on a few thorns, but otherwise clears the doorway unscathed. He then grabs the knob and pushes his weight against the door to open it, which causes the door to creak loudly and eventually just fall over outwards into the next room. _Good_. The princess thinks. _Hopefully this is the start of things going better._

The room the princess steps out into is not one he expects to find directly next to a garden. As he steps out into a grand ballroom, he can’t help but hearken back to the night of his and his twin sister’s birthday party, the dress he’s wearing the one that was made for him. _Well,_ he thinks, _the dress was ACTUALLY made for Lup and a suit was made for me, but we switched because we liked each other’s outfits better. Lucretia was so upset…_ a smirk finds its way onto the princess’s face. _Magnus was into it though, so was Barry. He couldn’t keep his eyes off Lup the whole night!_ The princess thinks as he walks through the room. Suddenly though, the lights in the long-abandoned grand ballroom all come to life.

“The fuck…?” The princess remarks. He notices out of the corner of his eye that it’s not just the room that’s lit, the sword is glowing as well. “ _The fuck_?” He says again. “I didn’t like, break anything in the last few minutes, did I?” The princess holds the sword out in front of himself with both hands.

“You trying to tell me something?” He asks the sword. The princess’s head starts to fill with incomprehensible whispers, just as it did when he first unwrapped the sword. In his head, he sees himself at the night of the party, in his finery, dancing and laughing. The princess is drawn out of the memory by a glimpse of himself in a mirror just past the sword in his field of vision. He gasps, looking at himself, stepping closer to the mirror. His beautiful blonde braid is now dirty, matted, and coming apart. His face has three long slashes across it, starting at the upper left side of his face and ending at the bottom right. His dress is basically rags, a miracle that it still hangs on him really, and through the holes and blood stains, he can see the deep gashes and large hole where he was stabbed in his stomach. He continues his inspection of himself and looks at his legs, which he sees are swollen and dark shades of purple, yellow, and green.

“Damn, I knew I looked bad, but I didn’t think it was _this_ bad…” the princess says softly. He laughs bitterly. “FUCK! Look at my fucking FACE!” He brings his left hand up to wipe away a stray tear, then looks down at the glowing, cursed sword in his right.

“I hope you’re fucking happy,” he mutters down at it. The sword seems to glow brighter at his words. The princess lets out another bitter laugh. “Y’know what? Fuck this,” he says, and swings the sword at the mirror with both hands, watching the glass rain to the ground as it shatters.

“What the fuck else do you have to throw at me, ruins?! Huh?!” He shouts to the empty room. “And YOU!” The princess holds the sword aloft. “You fucking WANTED THIS!” He tries to fling the sword across the room only to find himself stumbling forward and stepping on a piece of the broken mirror. “Fuck,” the princess says, sitting down to pick the glass out. When he’s done, he throws his head back, eyes closed.

When he finally opens them, he notices a mural on the domed ceiling. The mural depicts a story familiar to the princess. A mysterious stranger gifts a princess a sword – _the_ sword – after which the princess finds they can’t put it down. Then the princess, still in their party dress, with no shoes, embarks on a journey that takes her to a familiar looking castle. Though in the mural the castle still appears to be in its prime. The princess enters and faces trials, each leaving her more and more battered and broken than the last, until eventually she ends up in front of a mirror in the ballroom.

“What the actual fuck…” our princess says, looking up at the mural. “What happens then?” He looks, apprehensive, to the next part of the mural… but it’s been destroyed. He can only make out the sword, by itself, glowing and floating in midair. “Great. I’m gonna Fantasy McFucking lose it.” The princess closes his eyes and collapses to the floor. He turns his head to look at the sword.

“What the hell do you even _want_ anyway…” He sighs, and looks at his braid, and notices how he can somewhat see his reflection in the old floor. He continues to stare at his braid, and doesn’t realize it when he falls asleep.

When the princess wakes up, it’s dark outside. He can tell due to the broken windows that were letting in creeping vines and rays of light hours ago when he fell asleep that are now dark . The room is still lit though, and the sword is still glowing. He sits up and considers it.

“Are you gonna tell me what you want, or are we gonna rot in this fucking ballroom until the end of time?” He asks the sword. The sword glows a little brighter, and the princess is about to give up and lie back down when he hears a voice in his head, clear, among the whispering the sword had put there in the past.

“You’ve already given me so much of what I want,” the sword speaks, a deep, gravely voice into the princess’s head. A voice akin to a crow gargling bits of glass.

“And just what would that be?” The princess asks, unnerved.

“Look at the things you’ve destroyed, look at yourself, look at the shattered mirror in front of you.”

“What…!” It all becomes clear to the princess then. This entire time, he had been destroying things, including himself, that were beautiful. “… Fuck you…” the princess says, his head reeling with the realization.

The sword seems to chuckle. “The only thing really left for me to take from you here… would be your life.” The princess’s head shot up.

“Y-you want me to use you to kill myself?” The princess asks.

“While that would be ideal, perhaps we can reach an… agreement.” The sword didn’t have a face, but the princess could swear it was smiling. “I could disfigure you further, see to it that no one finds you beautiful ever again.”

“Bet you’re hoping I’d say I’d rather die, aren’t you?”

“Very few before you have chosen that option, and it would be nice to consume you. But you have the choice.”

The princess thinks about the swords offer for a bit, but there was really no question. Lup would kill him if he died.

“Guess I can kiss all the cute boys goodbye. Especially that hunk son of the Raven Queen… Fine. Alright, you can take my undeniable beauty,” the princess says.

“Wonderful,” the sword’s voice rumbles in the princess’s mind, the whispering growing louder and louder. The princess brings his hands up to cover his ears, but it’s in vain. He hears a screaming break through the whispering and realizes it’s his. The whispering and his screaming get louder and louder until they’re deafening. Growing louder, and louder, and louder, until…

It all stops.

The princess is still for a moment, then looks up just in time to see the sword glowing brighter than it ever had, floating before him, no longer attached to his right hand! The sword rises higher and glows brighter until light shoots from the sword all around the room. It looks fully repaired. The sword then darkens and falls to the ground, sticking itself into the marble floor amidst the mirror shards. With both of his hands finally free, the princess rushes forward and grabs a shard of the broken mirror, desperate to know what his new face looks like. He catches a glimpse of it and stares for a moment, then clenches the glass, cutting his palm, and throws it to the other side of the room. Where once his lips were full and bright, they are now dull and chapped. His once striking cheekbones now jut out and make his face look gaunt. His eyes are sunken, and there’s less striking color to them, his nose now crooked and malformed, and the cuts across his face more prominent and pronounced than ever.

It was still the princess, but it wasn’t. He was duller, more awkward-looking, gaunt, and disfigured.

******

When the princess returned to his castle, he kept a hood he had acquired low over his face and refused to speak to anyone until he could get to his room. Once there, he threw off the hood and lunged for his wand, planning on casting an illusion spell on himself to make his face look like it once did, but he found that his magic did nothing. He even got his sister, Lup, and her boyfriend, Barry, and eventually even the kingdom’s illusion magic specialist, Davenport, to put his face back to what it once was, but it was all in vain.

This isn’t to say that the princess lived a bad life. Even if he was no longer able to get whatever he wanted or sleep with whoever he wanted anymore, and even if he and Lup could no longer trade places to get out of the things the other didn’t want to do anymore, he was still able to find love in one Kravitz, son of the Raven Queen. Turns out Kravitz wasn’t just interested in the princess for his looks, like so many others. Something had fundamentally changed about the princess though, something more than just his looks. Castle attendants would sometimes find him staring at himself in mirrors for hours at a time, and would find blood stains on his clothes at others. The princess stopped wearing clothes that showed off his body, clothes he’d previously loved, and people noticed that he stopped wearing short sleeves as well. He would sometimes wake up hysterical, scaring his now husband, convinced he could still hear that whispering and feel the weight of the sword in his grasp. He was more prone to make violent or cautious decisions, and never wanted to be alone.

The princess was loved by those close to him, those he would call his family, but was spurned by the public. When his sister Lup took the throne (as she was the oldest), the citizens referred to him as The Faded Princess, in reference to the beauty he had once been.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! This was the first thing I've written that I've published, so please be gentle with me.


End file.
